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Stop West Nile Spraying NowSupport Effective Alternatives to Adulticide Spraying
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Murphy's Law of Pest
Control.
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roads lead to spraying? Local officials have long said that the reason to spray urban areas aerially is that we cannot get at back yards, where Culex pipiens hide, any other way. Now that we point out that Washington, D.C. officials control Culex pipiens without spray, our officials suddenly give Culex tarsalis, a rural mosquito, as the new reason to spray urban areas. What is wrong with this picture? How effective is spraying adulticides? "Treating mosquitoes with spray is . . . analogous to
trying to machinegun mosquitoes in flight as opposed to attacking their
life support while they are relatively fixed in the water. The former
is mathematically difficult to impossible and dangerous. The latter,
while requiring more thinking, is less dangerous and very effective (as
shown by data) . . . " The dose is so low that there can't possibly be any harm! Or can there? Apparently the argument by vector-control and public-health officials is that even though there is no credible evidence that spraying works, we might as well give it a try since the dose is so low -- just maybe it will work. At best this would be a waste of money and time, but officials are ignoring substantial evidence of risk even at low doses . . . See full text. Since Silent Spring -- got politics? In his book, Since Silent Spring, Frank Graham, Jr., noted that "Rachel Carson has been proved right" and posed the question "What have we done about it?" Peruse these passages and notice some striking similarities with what is going on today relative to West Nile virus. Faith-based vector control? A recent letter to the editor, suggesting that without any scientific evidence to show that adulticiding slows the transmission of WNv to humans, using it as part of a control strategy amounts at best to a matter of faith on the part of SYMVCD. Propaganda from SYMVCD and CDC?
District Manager David Brown
made this presentation at a CDC conference. In spite of
errors, misrepresentations and false claims the director of the CDC has
refused to remove it from the website. |
Are there good alternatives to spraying adulticides?A number of locales around the country (e.g. Cheyenne, Boulder, Ft. Worth, and Washington, D.C.) have elected not to spray and have achieved equal or better results than surrounding locales that have sprayed.Have WNv risks been exaggerated and spraying risks largely ignored?As communities around the country have dealt with this issue, some strong statements have been made that suggest that the media and local public-health officials have exaggerated the WNV risk while ignoring very real risks from spraying of adulticides and the ineffectiveness at stopping the transmission of WNV to humans. We list a few of them here.Do these pesticides pose any risks?The U.S. EPA classifies PBO as a Group C-possible carcinogen. Poisonings by the so-called "safe" pesticides are on the rise, and these chemicals are harmful to some people in the short run and pose threats to all of us in the long run by increasing the mutagens in the environment . . . See full text.Our responses to questions vector control officials did not answer.The District was presented with many citizens' questions from public forums, one held by Stop West Nile Spraying Now on 8/22/05 and one officials walked out of in the City chambers on 8/23/05 (see City Forum). The District failed to answer many questions and gave partial, misleading, and factually incorrect answers to others . . . See full textDoes this protect the public health or is it a
grand hoax?
An op-ed
for the Davis Enterprise on August 13, 2006, suggesting that the
decision to spray Davis was a political one that had nothing to do with
the public health.
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